


put those colors on

by starlight_sugar



Category: Neoscum (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Gen, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-09-30 09:01:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17220929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starlight_sugar/pseuds/starlight_sugar
Summary: Not all family is soulmates, and that’s pretty normal. It’s hard to say what a soulmate is, anyways. Some soulmates meet on the street once and never again. Some get to see each other every day. The only common factor is that when your soulmate touches you, they leave a mark. A color, in the shape of wherever they touched you.(Or, the crew of the Xanadu is a family. They're also soulmates.)





	put those colors on

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is part of the AUcember series, a self-made challenge where I try to write a new AU one-shot every day. You can read all of the AUcember fics in the collection linked above.

5.

Max stares down at the needle. “Is it going to hurt?”

All four of them answer at the same time, which is pretty much par for the course. Max waits three seconds before looking at Z.

“Not much,” Z says, which is sort of comforting, but Z also has pretty weird standards for pain. That eye thing looks like it could hurt when it goes in and out.

Max looks at Tech instead, but Tech only shrugs. “Mine is small.”

“But did it hurt?”

“Max, bud, yours is going to hurt more because it involves more going over the skin again.” Dak whirs the tattoo gun a couple times, and Max narrowly avoids flinching. “But it’s not gonna be that bad. It’s gonna sting, sure, but-”

“You don’t have to if you really don’t want to,” Pox says, with genuine worry coloring her voice. The guys all sit up a little straighter, but Pox is tilting her head at him sympathetically, hair falling to one side. “Just because the rest of us-”

“I want to,” Max says, just like that. He glances down at his arm. Dak’s free hand is resting on it, and he can see the soulmate color pulsing out from underneath, bright red blurring across his arm. There are other shades from the rest of the crew fading away, gold and pink and blue blotches. It looks like a watercolor painting. It looks like home.

Max swallows and looks at the stencil of the tattoo. “I want to,” he repeats, and Dak grins at him.

  
  


1.

The first color that Max remembers seeing is his sister’s.

Not all family is soulmates, and that’s pretty normal. It’s hard to say what a soulmate is, anyways. Some soulmates meet on the street once and never again. Some get to see each other every day. The only common factor is that when your soulmate touches you, they leave a mark. A color, in the shape of wherever they touched you.

Max didn’t understand the colors for a long time. But he was fascinated with poking his sister’s cheeks and watching bright green spots bloom across them. She went through the same thing, when she was old enough to understand. There were days when Max’s whole arms would be covered in soft lavender handprints.

He, like everyone else, had a couple more when he was a kid. His mom never left marks on him, but she left these lovely dandelion-yellow spots on his sister. He had friends who left midnight blue and rusty orange on his arms, friends who moved away and he never saw again. And he had his uncle Dak, his mother’s brother, who kept showing up and breezing out.

Dak left red marks on Max, as long as he could remember. That’s the second color that Max remembers seeing.

  
  


3.

It’s cold, where the technomancers are keeping him. It’s cold, and he’s alone.

It’s kind of hard to keep track of the days. It’s not like they’re not feeding him or anything, he’s in pretty good physical condition. But he’s alone.

They weren’t exactly buddy-buddy before this. The technomancers are friends but Max is new, and inexperienced, and had his own family. Max came in with colors all over his body, ending with a long blue mark along his forearm from where he hugged Z. Nobody else had colors. Not the way Max did.

It varies, how long it takes the colors to fade. He lost his sister’s colors days ago, and he’s not sure when he’ll see her again. The marks from Pox and Tech, lighter touches left longer ago, fade faster. There’s a mark from Dak on the back of his neck that he can just barely see peeking out on one side that’s gone in a couple days.

It takes four days for the mark from Z to fade. And that’s when Max realizes he’s entirely alone.

  
  


2.

When he starts riding in Xanadu, it takes about half a second to realize that they’re all soulmates. Everyone is a hodgepodge, an abstract painting of each other’s colors, so it takes him a while to figure out who’s whose. He knows Dak’s, of course, can identify that fire truck red from a mile away. But everyone else is harder.

The first time Pox touches him, it’s in surgery. He doesn’t see it but he sees the aftermath of it: hot magenta patches on his torso, on what’s left of one leg and one arm. He’s hurt and sore and afraid, but it makes him feel a little better to look down and see the patches. Makes him feel a little less alone.

Z takes a little while longer, but eventually he takes Max’s hand to help him point at something. His color is blue, almost metallic, faded and slate-colored. It stays almost as long as Pox’s, from an infinitely lighter touch. Max spends a lot of time staring at his arm, the color winding up it. He’s never known anyone with a color like that.

He gets Tech’s color by accident. They just brush against each other and then Max’s side is covered with faded gold. It takes him a while to notice, with how subtle the color is, but Max glitters in the right light. It’s not a rich yellow, like his mother’s was, but it’s present. Once he notices he can’t look away.

And once he works that out, all he can see is how all of them touch each other. It’s in casual, subtle ways: pokes on arms and ruffles in hair and hands on waists. Pox falls asleep on everyone, at some point, and their face will be half pink, and she’ll just grin and borrow peoples hands to try and draw colored patterns on her own face.

It’s nice. It’s nicer when they start bringing Max into the fold. Mostly Dak, at first, but then the rest of them get used to it. Pox naps on him day in and day out. Max gets used to seeing everyone else with green patches on them, and he gets used to seeing their colors on him.

It’s only a couple days, but it feels like a lifetime with them.

  
  


4.

“You’re empty!” Pox shouts.

Max doesn’t say anything. He’s too busy staring, mind racing, because they’re back. Why are they back? What would they do back in Colorado, they were supposed to be in LA, they can’t be here, it’s not safe, it’s not-

“Empty?” Z repeats, but then he scans Max’s body. His eye widens. “You know, I see what you mean.”

“Wh-what are you doing,” Max stammers out, eyes darting between them. “The technomancers-”

“We’re getting you out,” Pox says. “And also fixing you up, because Jesus Christ, Max, you look like a blank sheet of paper! Weird, fleshy paper.”

“Blank?” Max finally looks down at his arm, and then at Pox. Her face is half blue, with clear red spots on one of her cheeks. If she tilts her head right, he can make out some golden glitter. He’s suddenly, starkly aware that he has no color on him, compared to her, even compared to Z. “I’m-”

“Enough!” She launches herself forward, too suddenly for Max to do anything other than catch her. One of her hands claps the back of his neck, and her face goes to the joint between neck and shoulder. “This is a jailbreak,” she says. Her breath tickles his neck, and it’s the warmest he’s felt in days. “We’re busting you out, we’re taking you home.”

“You’re taking me home,” he echoes, faintly. He thinks about Xanadu, and everyone there, and how it felt to have four colors on him at all times. Home, indeed.

“Yeah, dude,” Z says, and Max takes the deepest, steadiest breath he can manage. He thinks Z and Pox understand. He’s sure they do. “Let’s get going.”

  
  


6.

Nobody’s tattoos are the same. Dak’s is on his ribs, and it’s messy - not an aesthetically intentionally messy, but slapdash and brightly colored. Pox’s is prettier, with watercolor splotches. Z’s and Tech’s are smaller, cleaner, and the colors are perfect.

They all have stars, with the crew’s colors on them. Dak’s red, Pox’s pink, Z’s blue, Tech’s gold. And Max’s green, the fifth point on every single star. Some of them have more colors around them - Tech has a midnight blue moon, Pox’s star has a sunshine yellow heart - but the core is all the same. The crew is their family.

Max looks at his arm and thinks about it being empty, being without his soulmates. And so he gets six tattoos, five stars and a lavender heart for his sister. Dak is patient as Max changes the lavender a dozen times, tweaking it so it’s warmer, cooler, exactly the way he remembers it.

“They’re perfect,” Tech says quietly. Max thinks he out of everyone understands: the fear of permanence, and the leap of faith in embracing it. And now he has the colors with him, forever.

“Yeah,” Max says. He can’t take his eyes off all the stars. “Yeah, they are.”

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on Tumblr and Twitter @waveridden!


End file.
